From: Mark Davis, Mt. Pleasant, South Carolina
North American Meteor Network & American Meteor Society
Date: Wed, 18 Nov 1998 11:38:40 -0500

With the possibility of fog developing in the early morning, I opted to go
out a little early and monitor activity from the Taurid radiants. Arriving a
little early for Leonids, I did see some activity the first two hours from
the Taurids: 4 the first hour and 2 the second. A brilliant white sporadic
fireball of -5.0 magnitude appeared at 0322 UT, the first of only three seen
all morning (the other two were Leonids).

Since I had started observing early, I hadn't expected any Leonid activity
early on, but I also didn't expect my first Leonid to appear at 0547 UT
(0047 EST) either! But at a magnitude of -2.0, I anticipated a "bright"
night similar to what occurred last night. But that never panned
out, as activity from the Leonids was disappointing. I only observed a total
of 13 Leonids over about a 2.5 hour period. When activity seemed to be
picking up a little, fog began moving in, ending my data collection. I hung
around drinking coffee and just looking up for about another 45 minutes, but
then decided to call it quits.

The forecast for tonight doesn't look promising. Forecast for Thursday night
into the weekend is my daughter Hailey, the book "Goodnight Moon" and all of
her
Barbie dolls. Hmm, maybe Ken et al would like to watch for meteors.... ;-D

Totals for this morning were:

0245-0745 UT
Teff=5.00 hrs
LM = 5.52 to 5.74
LEO(13)
NTA(6)
STA(7)
SPO(26)